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CIAO DATE: 04/05/07
Baluchis, Beijing, and Pakistan's Gwadar Port
by Ziad Haider
On 3 May 2004, three Chinese engineers were killed and eleven others, including nine Chinese and two Pakistanis, were injured when a remote-controlled car bomb hit their van. The engineers had been traveling to the Gwadar port in the southwest Pakistani province of Baluchistan. In response, President Pervez Musharraf and then Prime Minister Zafarallah Jamali immediately sent messages of condolences to their Chinese counterparts, assuring them that a few terrorists could never undermine the Sino-Pakistani friendship. Within the week, the Frontier Corps was deployed to the port and armed escorts were assigned to the Chinese workers. Following the detention of eighteen people, Pakistani officials declared on 9 May that they had arrested the “key suspect” behind the attack. Since then, obscure reports periodically appear in the Pakistani press regarding other culprits who have been apprehended with scant information provided on their background.
The alacrity of Islamabad’s response shows the immense premium it places on the Sino-Pakistani relationship and the Gwadar deep seaport project. The port lies at the heart of President Musharraf’s vision of prosperity for Pakistan. It is meant to transform Pakistan into a vibrant hub of commercial activity among the energy rich Gulf and Central Asian states, Afghanistan, and China, and to provide the Pakistan Navy with strategic depth along its coastline as a naval base. The port will also enable China to diversify its crude oil import routes and extend its presence in the Indian Ocean. Thus, China’s con tribution of technical assistance, 450 workers and 80 percent of the funds for the construction of the port, is one of the latest chapters in the storied “allweather” friendship.
Certain regional state and non-state actors, however, do not share China and Pakistan’s enthusiasm for the port. The port has raised eyebrows in neighboring India and Iran over Sino-Pakistani maritime activities and has sparked a tacit competition over whether Pakistan’s Gwadar port or Iran’s Chabahar port, built with Indian assistance, will serve as Central Asia’s conduit to warm waters. The port fuels bitter discontent among local Baluchi nationalists who believe that the benefits of the project will bypass them and who maintain longstanding griev ances against the federal government. The port also presents a potentially irresistible target to al-Qaeda as payback for Pakistan’s cooperation in the U.S.-led war on terror.
While Pakistan and China believe that the port will deliver significant eco nomic and military gains, India, Iran, and the local Baluchis view it as a potential threat to their economic interests and security, and al-Qaeda presumably rejects it as Pakistan’s steppingstone to becoming a stronger, more prosperous state. Realizing the Gwadar dream in such an inimical environment will not be easy; however, Islamabad can bolster its position by adopting a two-pronged strategy.
First, it must recognize that the port’s greatest opponent is its own people, the local Baluchis, and it must assure them of their stake in a project of critical importance to national security. Failure to build a consensus on the port could result in its violent derailment and possibly preclude future Chinese manpower and technical assistance on development projects due to security concerns.2 Second, Pakistani officials should leverage the port to attract Chinese investment and to forge a vibrant economic relationship with China that reflects their strong politico-military relationship. For Pakistan to reap the dividends of the Gwadar port, the Baluchis and Beijing need to be firmly anchored to it.
Ziad Haider is Research Assistant for the South Asia Program at the Henry L. Stimson Center.